


Give Your Word

by lyonet



Series: A Right Turn After Bad Idea [13]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 02:58:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8649049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyonet/pseuds/lyonet
Summary: “Welcome, friends,” Gwaine declaimed sombrely, lifting his shotglass in a toast, “to the last night of our dear Merlin’s bachelorhood.”
“I’m not a bachelor,” Merlin complained. “I’ve had a boyfriend for months. I’ve got a fiancé.”
“Last night of freedom, then,” Gwaine said, unperturbed. “Drink up, Merlin, it’s a big moment.”
As he spoke, the music died away and the band started to play what was unmistakably a punk rock cover of the Wedding March.





	

The club in Ismere was the kind of place where you went to meet people, if it was the kind of night when ‘meet’ was a euphemism for ‘make meaningful eye contact at the bar and end up shagging in the toilets’. Coming here was Gwaine’s idea. He was friends with a bouncer called Percival, who had biceps roughly the size of Merlin’s head and looked like he really ought to be guarding the Crown Jewels instead of a building that was vibrating with Avicci. He grinned at Gwaine and gave him a pat on the back that looked capable of taking out a couple of vertebrae, then waved them all in easily.

The entrance was narrow and dark, not promising, but then opened out into the ground floor, where the sheet metal walls shimmered under the pulsing lights like ice. The music was loud enough to drown out your second thoughts and there were four bartenders to keep up with demand. A lot of people weren’t wearing shirts, including most of the live band tuning up on the stage. Gwaine blew a kiss to the very pale one with the shaved head and they threw him a wink.

“Do we have to start taking off clothes too?” Will demanded.

“Would you do it if I say yes?” Gwaine asked interestedly. “Since Freya nixed the strippers – ”

“ _I_ nixed the strippers,” Merlin pointed out.

“Yeah, but you’re not as scary as Freya.”

Will made a point of doing up a button on the collar of his shirt and Gwaine laughed, utilising his excessive amount of charm to get them all drinks in under ten minutes despite the crush around the bar. Will elbowed a path through to a table on the edge of the dance floor.

“Welcome, friends,” Gwaine declaimed sombrely, lifting his shotglass in a toast, “to the last night of our dear Merlin’s bachelorhood.”

“I’m not a bachelor,” Merlin complained. “I’ve had a boyfriend for _months_. I’ve got a _fiancé_.”

“Last night of freedom, then,” Gwaine said, unperturbed. “Drink up, Merlin, it’s a big moment.”

As he spoke, the music died away and the band started to play what was unmistakably a punk rock cover of the Wedding March. “This one is for Merlin Emrys, who’s walking down the aisle tomorrow!” called the shaven-headed lead singer. Gwaine and Will lifted their glasses with a raucous cheer. Merlin considered hiding under the table as every head in the club turned his way.

The truth was, Merlin had been in two minds over whether to have a stag night at all. He had a pretty low tolerance for alcohol at the best of times and getting married to the love of his life was not an experience he particularly wanted to have while hungover. But Leon and Lance had talked Arthur into having one (Arthur was so much easier to talk into things than he would ever admit) so Merlin had decided that he might as well have a night out with a few friends too.

It turned out that they had other ideas. Gwaine and Will were invested in his having a proper stag night to what Merlin considered a slightly concerning degree and had made plans that they refused to divulge to him, just sniggered over between themselves. Ismere was where they had agreed to meet up. Freya arrived at the same time as the second round of shots.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Merlin asked her, leaning across the table to be heard.

She just rolled her eyes and stole Will’s drink, ignoring his splutter of indignation. She came along when Merlin got up to dance, mouthing along to the lyrics. They  waved their arms in the air and spun each other around, because those were the only moves either of them were any good at. Gwaine let them bounce aimlessly for a couple of songs before staging an intervention.  _ He  _ was an excellent dancer, shimmying across the floor with Merlin first before twirling Freya neatly under his arm and hoisting her in a showy lift. Will snickered at their table with a bowl of crisps and his phone raised to record it all.

“Stage two!” he announced, when Merlin and Freya collapsed into chairs on either side of him.

Stage two meant leaving the club and piling into a taxi. Will refused to say the directions out loud and showed the driver a scrap of paper instead so that Merlin would get ‘the full experience’. Merlin learned that the night had been planned by the three of them and everyone had picked different places to go, the club being Gwaine’s contribution. 

“He was really disappointed about the strippers,” Freya said, leaning sideways from the front seat. “But I thought Arthur wouldn’t like it.”

“Your loss,” Gwaine sniffed. “I know the best.”

“Our loss,” Will said. “But my idea was better anyway.”

“It wasn’t,” Freya stage-whispered to Merlin, “we just couldn’t talk him out of it.”

The taxi pulled up outside a swimming pool complex. “What,” said Merlin, who knew Will too well and had a sudden dreadful suspicion about what was coming next. “It’s shut.”

“Nope,” Will said gleefully. He led them around to a side entrance. “We’re going skinny dipping!”

“It is _fucking December_ ,” Merlin hissed.

“That’s why we’re going to the _heated_ pool,” Will said haughtily, like it ought to have been obvious. “I knew you’d be a total sook about this, I even brought towels.”

The lights were all off but the water was warm, a fact Merlin tested with a distrustful toe. Will stripped down immediately and dived into the pool, followed by Gwaine. Freya was wearing a swimming costume under her dress and carefully tied up her hair before jumping in after them. “Thank fuck for waterproof mascara,” she sighed, when Gwaine flicked water on her.

Deciding he might as well get in the spirit of the thing, Merlin went for the diving board. Will roared approval at the clumsy splash. The water felt wonderful, like the most indulgent bath Merlin had ever had.

“I am getting so many high school flashbacks now,” Freya said.

“Best years of your lives?” Gwaine asked, floating around on his back.

“Nooo,” Merlin, Freya and Will chorused as one.

“The skinny dipping was a terrible idea back then too,” Freya added.

“This barely even counts as skinny dipping,” Will sulked, submerging himself.

Freya laughed. “You have a better haircut these days, anyway.”

Flailing around in a pool in his boxers in the middle of the night on New Year’s Eve, Will and Freya bickering in the background, Merlin might as well be fourteen again. The three of them had pulled stunts like this all the time back then. Gwaine fit in surprisingly well, given how short a time he had known them; Merlin was sure he would liked him just as much then as he did now. 

Will brought out a beach ball from behind the stack of towels and they played a game of catch that was more competitive than skilful, with Will screaming out ridiculously inaccurate scores at regular intervals and Gwaine flipping his wet hair around as he went through impromptu cheerleader routines. The air felt freezing when they finally climbed out and everyone dove for the towels, drying off quickly to get back into their clothes.

“What’s next?” Merlin asked, pulling on his T-shirt.

Freya grinned wickedly. “My turn.”

* * *

There was a reason Arthur had not asked Morgana to join the bridal party. In fact, there were a lot of reasons, but the idea of her planning his stag night was too terrifying to contemplate. He had been there for hers, after all, and two parties like that in one year would paint the town a whole lot redder than Arthur could handle.

He’d been there for Leon and Lance’s stag nights too, and was kind of expecting to be taken to a bowling alley or, if Lance had any say in it, a petting zoo, but they had actually booked a table at Arthur’s favourite restaurant and spent a leisurely dinner reminiscing on good times past. “You knocked me over with a broom,” Lance said. “You went on a crusade against the department coffee machine,” Leon remembered. The two of them clinked glasses together fondly.

They had even assembled a photo album of greatest friendship hits. Arthur suspected Merlin’s hand in it, though only Leon could have persuaded Uther to dig up those old portraits and for the love of – “Why did I think it was a good idea to wear that?” Arthur groaned, trying to hide the album under a chair. “Do  _ not _ tell Morgana that I’ve got this.”

“It’s all right,” Leon said soothingly, “look at her hair on page six.”

After dinner they walked over to a jazz bar that Lance liked (mostly because Gwen liked it, and because she’d dress up in long bead necklaces and T-strap heels to kill it on open mic nights), where they had martinis and got mistaken for a boy band. “Why does this happen every time we go out with you?” Arthur demanded of Lance, who brushed his soft dark hair out of his soft dark eyes and looked vaguely perplexed. “You don’t even sing.”

“I can play the flute,” Lance began.

Arthur shot a nervous look at the girls who had accosted them before, and who were still throwing Lance speculative looks. “ _Don’t encourage them_.”

When Leon went to the bar to buy another round, Arthur managed to retrieve his phone. Leon had taken it when they arrived at the restaurant because he didn’t trust Arthur to keep it switched off, which was _maybe_ a reasonable doubt to have, but Leon did not have much stealth to work with and Arthur slipped it out of his jacket pocket without any trouble. His inbox was unusually sparse, probably because all of his friends knew where he was, and he was off work for the next two weeks. There was a text from Morgana that just read _WEDDING CLUB_ but Arthur decided to ignore that one, the way he had been trying to ignore all of Morgana’s input on his wedding. To his surprise, there was also a text from Gwaine. It was about two minutes of video showing Merlin and Freya waving their arms around on a dancefloor.

“Did Merlin text?” Lance said, catching the smile on Arthur’s face.

“He dances like a maniac,” Arthur said, playing the video for the third time. “It’s embarrassing.”

Lance was a nice person and let Arthur pretend he was not being sappy all over his phone screen. Leon was a slightly less nice person who was annoyed at having his pocket picked and took a sneaky video of Arthur when he’d had enough drinks to think having a go at the open mic was a good idea. Arthur only realised he’d done it when he got a text from Merlin saying  _king of karaoke, sire!_ And then he had to whack Leon with a coaster.

When they left the jazz club, a sleek black car pulled in at the curb to pick them up. Arthur baulked but Lance nudged him towards the open door and by the time his half-formed suspicion was confirmed – bloody Morgana smirking from the driver’s seat like the abductress that she was – it was too late to make a break for it.

“The first rule of wedding club,” she said, “is no one warns you about wedding club,” and she pulled away with a squeal of tyres.

* * *

“How could you, Freya?” Will hissed. “Traitor.”

“Hello to you too, William,” Vivian said. She was wearing a blue and gold gown that looked like it had originally intended to be medieval but had been sidetracked by haute couture on the way, and she was holding an honest to God goblet. A thin golden tiara encircled her perfect hair. Merlin blinked at her.

“Why,” he began.

Vivian plopped a feathered hat on his head and pushed the goblet into his hand. “Because you’re Merlin Pendragon now. Or as good as.”

“Emrys-Pendragon,” Merlin corrected.

“That is more pretentious than the feathers,” Vivian said. “Come in! Party like it’s 1464!”

They stepped out onto a rooftop terrace. There was a fire pit in the middle radiating warmth and flickering light, and waiters in jester uniforms were carrying around trays of mulled wine. The guests were all in costume. Merlin recognised Mithian in a white faux fur capelet, laughing with Elena, who was all sunshine in a yellow tunic and hose. A burly man who Merlin thought was probably Elyan had gauntlets on that glinted every time he moved; he was carrying a small boy around on his hip and little Aithusa was holding onto his free hand, fascinated by the flexing metal. Kara and Mordred were here too – it was Morgana’s party, after all – sharing a plate of chicken with Morgause and Sefa.

Gwen, queenly in purple silk, swept up and kissed Merlin on the cheek. “Is this okay?” she whispered in his ear. “I’ll cover you if you want to sneak off home.”

“What _is_ this?”

“Morgana being sweet,” Gwen said, “though don’t tell her I said that. Will, Gwaine, you go with Mordred, he’ll show you where to change into your costumes. Merlin, I’ve got something special for you.” She plucked the hat off his head. “Not this. Definitely not this. Typical Vivian.”

Merlin was in the ladies toilet changing into the layers of his costume, with Gwen helping to tie the awkward bits, when such an enormous cheer went up on the terrace that it could only mean that Arthur had arrived. Gwen straightened up Merlin’s cloak and turned him around to face the mirror. She had put him in a dark blue doublet that made him look pale and serious.

“You look like a prince,” Gwen said, with quiet satisfaction.

Merlin glanced at her in the mirror. “I’m glad I met you, Gwen. This what’s his is mine thing is really working in my favour.”

Gwen smiled. “Mine, too. Are you ready?”

“We’re not getting married until tomorrow, you know.”

“That’s not what I asked, Merlin.”

He took a deep breath and took a second look in the mirror. He had never given any thought to getting married before he met Arthur, it had always been a nebulous ‘someday, maybe’. Arthur had been a split-second decision and now the idea that Merlin could ever have made a different one was terrifying. Getting married meant he was making that decision all over again, just with more of an idea of what he was getting into, more paperwork to sign, more to lose.

“I’m ready,” he said.

Arthur was on the terrace when Merlin came back, surrounded by men in chainmail. Merlin spared a little bit of awe for Morgana managing to conjure up that much chainmail at short notice, and then he saw Arthur, and temporarily forgot Morgana existed. Arthur was in red. The cloak fell around him like it was something he wore every day, like he _should_ wear it every day, and the chainmail underneath gleamed by firelight. There was a crown on his head and the grumpiest pout ever on his face, until he saw Merlin.

“They got you too,” he said, his eyes sliding over the doublet like he wanted to pull it off with his teeth. “Traitors, everyone.”

“Will said so too,” Merlin said. “Can you keep that chainmail after, do you think?”

“For the honeymoon?” Arthur smirked. “Vivian will probably giftwrap it, for that.”

They leaned together for a quick, chaste kiss. That roused another cheer – multiple people slapped their backs, and Morgana shouted, “Save it for midnight, boys!”

Vivian hooked up a playlist to the terrace sound system and led an exodus onto the dancefloor. She had either found or possibly paid a string quartet to turn her favourite pop songs into dignified instrumental music. Morgana swept Aithusa up in her arms and the three of them danced in the middle of the floor, Aithusa giggling under her dragon mask  as Morgana swung her up high. Elena and Gwaine’s moves would have fit the original songs better as they careered all over the floor, contrasting against Leon and Mithian’s stately steps. Lance and Gwen had claimed a corner for themselves, swaying hand-in-hand with their heads close together.

Merlin and Arthur stayed at the railing, the city glittering with New Year’s Eve festivity below.

“Any plans for tonight?” Arthur inquired. His tone made it sound like a quote and it took Merlin a moment to realise that Arthur was quoting _him_ , from that first night at the Cavern.

“I’ve got a few in mind,” he said, leaning closer. Fuck midnight.

“Oh well,” Arthur breathed in his ear, just before their lips touched, “we’ve got plenty of time.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's a wrap! Thank you so much to everyone who read along and left their thoughts - I intended for 'Pick Your Poison' to be a one-off and it only grew into a series of...wow, nearly 60 000 words, due to the wonderful comments that made me think about what would happen next. If it's been half as much fun for you to read as it's been for me to write, then I've done my job.


End file.
